Something Ive Been Meaning to Tell You

boat as
she
, an affectation which Eva and Carol acknowledged with fish-mouths of contempt.
    “She’s caught two places. You got to be careful not to tear a hole in her bottom. She’s heavier than you’d think.”
    It was Clayton who climbed up and freed the boat, and Bud, a tall fat boy, who got the weight of it on his back to turn it into the water so that they could half float, half carry it to shore. All this took some time. Eva and Carol abandoned their log and waded out of the water. They walked overland to get their shoes and socks and bicycles. They did not need to come back this way but they came. They stood at the top of the hill, leaning on their bicycles. They did not go on home, but they did not sit down and frankly watch, either. They stood more or less facing each other, but glancing down at the water and at the boys struggling with the boat, as if they had just halted for a moment out of curiosity, and staying longer than they intended, to see what came of this unpromising project.
    About nine o’clock, or when it was nearly dark—dark to people inside the houses, but not quite dark outside—they all returned to town, going along Mayo Street in a sort of procession. Frank and Bud and Clayton came carrying the boat, upside-down, and Eva and Carol walked behind, wheeling their bicycles. The boys’ heads were almost hidden in the darkness of the overturned boat, with its smell of soaked wood, cold swampy water. The girls could look ahead and see the street lights in their tin reflectors, a necklace of lights climbing Mayo Street, reaching all the way up to the stand-pipe. They turned onto Burns Street heading for Clayton’shouse, the nearest house belonging to any of them. This was not the way home for Eva or for Carol either, but they followed along. The boys were perhaps too busy carrying the boat to tell them to go away. Some younger children were still out playing, playing hopscotch on the sidewalk though they could hardly see. At this time of year the bare sidewalk was still such a novelty and delight. These children cleared out of the way and watched the boat go by with unwilling respect; they shouted questions after it, wanting to know where it came from and what was going to be done with it. No one answered them. Eva and Carol as well as the boys refused to answer or even look at them.
    The five of them entered Clayton’s yard. The boys shifted weight, as if they were going to put the boat down.
    “You better take it round to the back where nobody can see it,” Carol said. That was the first thing any of them had said since they came into town.
    The boys said nothing but went on, following a mud path between Clayton’s house and a leaning board fence. They let the boat down in the back yard.
    “It’s a stolen boat, you know,” said Eva, mainly for the effect. “It must’ve belonged to somebody. You stole it.”
    “You was the ones who stole it then,” Bud said, short of breath. “It was you seen it first.”
    “It was you took it.”
    “It was all of us then. If one of us gets in trouble then all of us does.”
    “Are you going to tell anybody on them?” said Carol as she and Eva rode home, along the streets which were dark between the lights now and potholed from winter.
    “It’s up to you. I won’t if you won’t.”
    I won’t if you won’t.
    They rode in silence, relinquishing something, but not discontented.

    The board fence in Clayton’s back yard had every so often a post which supported it, or tried to, and it was on these posts that Eva and Carol spent several evenings sitting, jauntily but not very comfortably. Or else they just leaned against the fence while the boys worked on the boat. During the first couple of evenings neighborhood children attracted by the sound of hammering tried to get into the yard to see what was going on, but Eva and Carol blocked their way.
    “Who said you could come in here?”
    “Just us can come in this yard.”
    These evenings were getting longer, the air milder. Skipping was starting on the sidewalks. Further along the street there was a row of hard maples that had been tapped. Children drank the sap as fast as it could drip into the buckets. The old man and woman who owned the trees, and who hoped to make syrup, came running out of the house making noises as if they were trying to scare away crows. Finally, every spring, the old man would come out on his porch and fire his shotgun into the air, and then the thieving